Blackmagic Design’s Intensity is an unusual bit of kit. Most video capture cards try to offer as many different connection types as possible, but the tiny Intensity has two HDMI ports only.

Also, although it works perfectly, it has limited appeal as a capture card – but much for allowing you to monitor your video on an HDTV.

The Intensity will work inside most workstations that have a PCI Express slot, including Apple’s Mac Pro but not the Power Mac G5 – although drivers are expected soon. It works with all of Apple and Adobe’s video-production tools on Mac and Windows – including Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, and After Effects.

You can use the card to capture uncompressed HD from one of Sony’s camcorders that have an HDMI output, circumventing HDV compression for higher quality input – assuming you have a fast-enough RAID storage system. This is an impressive function on a technical level – and in our tests with a Sony HC7E, capture was painless and produced high-grade footage.